This network service installs on a central Windows PC or VM to provide remote mobile devices, desktops and web servers with Open Data Base Connectivity using Windows ODBC drivers available for almost every version of every brand of database management system ever produced (including legacy systems, mainframes and retail apps such as SAS, ASK, QuickBooks Pro, AccountEdge, etc..)

(1) If you are using Internet Explorer on a Windows "Server" edition (recommended, but not required), you will probably need to select Tools->Internet Options->Security tab->Trusted Sites->Sites and then add http://augsoft.com to that List before attempting to download our files.

(2) To authorize remote connections to an ODBC Router on recent versions of Windows, launch Start->Administrative Tools->'Windows Firewall with Advanced Security', pick Inbound Rules, then New Rule..., then Port, then Next, then Specific local ports , then TCP, then enter port 6110, then Next, then give the new 'rule' some name (e.g., ODBC Router). Likewise, if your ODBC Router clients are outside of your external firewall (or NAT router) and those clients don't connect via a VPN, then you will also need to open TCP port 6110 on the external firewall. The TCP port may be reconfigured from 6110 as desired; please contact Support for details. Some higher-end firewalls, such as those from CISCO, may impose an "inactivity timeout" that tears down 'idle' TCP sessions on particular ports, if not adjusted.

(3) If using 64-bit Windows operating systems, be sure to launch the 32-bit Data Sources (ODBC) control panel with Start->Run \windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe (or by creating a more convenient "Alias") and always select the SystemDSN property tab when configuring network data sources. ODBC Router only routes 32-bit ODBC drivers; however 64-bit databases such as MySQL, SQLServer and IBM DB/2 work well with 32-bit drivers because most nearly all database applications are 32-bit.

(4) After installation completes, any entries in the System DSN property-tab of the 32-bit Data Sources (ODBC) control panel will be available to retail apps on computers with ODBC Router client-side drivers installed and to custom apps developed with the client-side ODBC SDK. Use the Services control-panel to further Start, Stop or Pause the August Enterprise Services Hub service's acceptance of inbound database sessions as desired.

(5) The ODBC Router's free evaluation-mode will overwrite any previously purchased license and we may not be able to re-activate older software releases or clients without basic upgrade and support coverage. We deeply regret having to compile the evaluation with missing code modules and intentional memory leaks, randomly dropping sessions and a limited result-set size. Some of our client-side drivers will "warn" each time they connect to such a server, but other drivers run in some environments (such Apache/PHP) that can't. [For "connection failure" errors appearing in the logs from those client-drivers, you may verify that a "license rejection" was the cause of the error by moving to the Server and using Start->Run EVENTVWR.EXE then selecting the Application Log (which is located inside of the Windows Logs group on some editions of Windows).]

(6) For best performance, avoid browsing the list of tables or columns in the database, avoid use of column-wildcards (e.g., *) in your SELECT statements (i.e., explicitly name the columns of interest) and use SQL clauses to limit the count/range of rows being returned (MySQL example: SELECT a,b,c FROM myTable LIMIT 100,100 instead of SELECT * FROM myTable)

(7) If the database server and ODBC Router host happen to be the same computer, then you may usually choose an option in the ODBC SystemDSN control panel to cause the ODBC driver to communicate with its database using shared-memory, files, sockets or named-pipes and simply disable the database server's networking features (thus improving performance and security). AugSoft recommends choosing Microsoft Windows Web Server Edition (a hardened version of Windows) to host ODBC Router and disabling the unneeded IIS web-server component. Note that a server edition of Windows is not required for by ODBCRouter and that no ports are required to be open on the Windows Firewall of the ODBC Router host except for port 6110.